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Chris makes a good point about ingrained early habits, which I hadn't though of but agrees with my general impression of creative's post.

Creative's theory seems to fits the data very well, it matches up with intuition. But one thing i've learnt is that there are often many different theories which fit very well. Whether or not it's actually true is a different matter. If we had data for release trajectories for different players you could check if creative's theory agrees with the data. Just to make it clear, I am not disputing creative, I just don't know for sure. It certainly seems to agree with common sense but intuition can be wrong.

Btw chris, last night I watched a very long video [1] on shooting, and in it the coach says holding the ball in the fingertips is a mistake. He actually encourages his shooters to touch the ball with the whole hand for better stability and control. So like you said, it depends who taught you and how. But I can't help thing that there must be a 'natural' shooting form which if you're seeking it, must be unique for a given individual and body proportions.

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bbd0vOqCOPo

Thank you Rix. Will take your advice and have a word with him and take it from there.

I just got back from shooting practice now. Would have liked to have video to review but it was too dark and my camera doesn't work very well in low light. Here is what I tried and how it worked out -

1. Tried having elbow very high making shooting arm almost vertical at the end of the shot. Result: The ball goes too high into the sky, i'm pretty sure that it's never going to be the right shot for me. I can see someone with short arms and of a smaller height shooting like that to get a good arc - but for me it just ends up with a comically high arc.

2. Then i adjusted my usual form by bringing the ball release to occur closer to my head and with a higher release point than usual. This actually felt pretty good. Arc felt like normal, didn't feel like it was skying the ball high. The ball drops softer too, which is good since you don't want to hit the rim too hard (if you hit the rim that is). I think my ideal form is closer to this, i still want to experiment a bit more tinkering with shot release.

So i think i've improved my shot some. I wish I had video to confirm it looks prettier but I will have to wait till practice under better light to have proof. Funnily enough I hit more shots from 3pt line than from inside. Would be interesting to look at the video and try to figure out why that is.

As far as basketball goes, a few good friends of mine might be putting together a team to play in the season starting end of august. That's plenty of time to lose these last few kilos and get in shape.

Bodyweight: 85.3kg

okay, compare the text book

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euY_hdJc4nM" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euY_hdJc4nM</a>

where there the elbow snaps violently upwards ending in an almost vertical arm

and durant at 01:29s

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDhz_ZyMigI" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDhz_ZyMigI</a>

he does not snap his elbow.. he straightens his arm but it ends up being somewhere between horizontal and vertical to his body.

my footage from yesterday below

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56J2W8eP7g4" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56J2W8eP7g4</a>

saw your question yesterday about training w/a heavy basketball.  I know a few basketball trainers and coaches and I've seen them used to improve ball handling skills, develop soft hands for catching passes in traffic and to increase upper body stamina at the end of workouts via layup drills, tipping drills or Mikan drills but I've never seen anyone use it to improve shooting.  Personally, there's no way I'd use one for shooting because of the risk of it throwing off the mechanics of my shot.

Thank you. I need to work on all those areas so i'm going to make heavy use of the ball when it arrives. Ashamed to admit that I never learnt to do layups with my non-dexterous hand. Currently working on that and it's pretty awkward but i'm getting there.  Reading about the Mikan drill now while writing this post and damn that's exactly what I need.

Training
SQ - 3x120kg (5 month best), 7x100kg (PR)
BP - 1x92.5kg (PR!), 10x70kg (PR!)
10x30m sprints (5 warmups, 5 recorded time - 83, 83, 78, 65, 86 - new PR - 04:65!!)

Psyched myself up to lift today even though my knees were complaining even getting out of bed and sitting up from a chair. I spend a bit of time warming up them carefully - then went for it. I realised if I didn't train today, I wouldn't lift again til wednesday, meaning a 4 day break, which is bad news since my lifts go down rapidly on layoff. In the end I was really happy with training today. It's not every day you get 3 PRs - feels good man.

Breaking my sprint PR from 4:95 which I could never break to consistently breaking it today is just awesome. If I was to say why it happened, it's because I tried to pump my arms hard, which i never used to do until today. I picked that up from watching some youtube celebrity, forget his name, he's pretty famous for doing music videos and skits. The scary thing is, I'm not sure i've peaked. I can do a lot better than this - esp since i haven't sprinted in over 2 weeks, and today was the first time this month I felt healthy enough to go all out. The weathers been good, stopped raining, suns come out and it dried away the wet grass, was still a bit dewy though, but I didn't notice it when running though.

I decided I didn't want to do three heavy triples on my last workout of the week. It's gotten pretty heavy, and my form goes out of the window in sets 2 and 3. Mentally it's gotten very intimidating. Now I'd rather just psyche up and go all out with 1 heavy set and then finish off with backoff work. This workout isn't for getting stronger, that happens during the other 2 squat sessions. The heavy triple is just for setting a new PR. After the heavy triple, I took weight off the bar and did 100 for 7 reps. I had another rep or 2 in me, but I wasn't looking to set a new RM. My goal with the 2nd set is to add reps. If I can take my 7x100 to 10x105 or even 10x110 the 1RM calculator says my 1RM can go upto 150kg. Which is crazy. Because that means just working hard in the higher reps, in that narrow 10kg range of 100kg to 110kg, I can get still get a lot stronger. So why not do that in addition to doing heavy 5s and 3s as well as continuing with the 6s which are serving me very well too. It saves me burning out from grinding out sets across with heavy weights which fucking sucks.

92.5kg close grip felt good - i'm gonna be ambitious and try 95kg at the end of the month. I have a feeling I have it in me. That would bring me a step closer to the magic 100kg goal in the coming month/s.

Oh and i've decided to follow the good advice i've gotten to skip the distance running. I don't fucking need it. 20-30minutes shooting hoops is aerobic for me. So why the fuck would i beat up my knees on a treadmill when I could be working on something I enjoy as well as improving my skills in my sport? Exactly.

As far as conditioning goes, i'll ease myself gently into intervals and just build up slowly over time. I tend to be super skeptical of training advice after being burned before, but in this case i'm coming around to the idea now. I just have to be smart about training now. I am just coming out of injuries and if I pick my battles, I can improve across the board by budgeting my recovery sensibly.

Made some bad decisions today. There was a team training session planned, and I had to choose between lifting and going to training. Got there and realised it was a mistake because there were only 4 of us there, and they were playing 4v4 half court pickup games with some random guys. I wish I hadn't bothered driving there cos it took me 40mins and i missed my gym session for it. Didn't end up doing anything meaningful, i was hoping to run some plays but it was pointless with the low turnout. I said fuck it im here now and jumped into playing pickup. I was rested/fresh I felt amazingly athletic. I was hitting 8/10 of my shots, even nailed 3/4 of my 3point attempts and scoring a will, droving inside at will finishing off the glass or hitting a jumper. Got to say, if you play pickup the right way, it's actually a good way to practice different things. I tried posting up for instance, which i'd been inspired to having watched Lebron's play.

But oveall i'm regretting it now because i'd rather have squatted. Won't beat myself up too much, I made the wrong choice, it happens. Knees were complaining from running on the treadmill. Have to make some adjustments, i need my knees man and i've never had problems with them, so I don't want to mess that up now by doing some dumbshit choices. I think running on grass is best.

Passing isn't the only way to get the ball in your hands, you can also grab the rebound and keep it.   If i'm on a team and I don't feel like I'm getting enough touches  I focus on getting the rebound.  If the pace is too slow for your liking get the defensive rebound and push the ball yourself.  You may need to work on your handle, if you do the drills here the prescribed # of times every day for a week you should have more than sufficient handle for pushing the ball. Bottomline, if they're not giving you the opportunities you deserve create your own opportunities and show them why they're better off with the ball in your hands.

On defense we play 2-3 zone and i'm back on the wing, so when I've got the rebound 9/10 players on the court are already infront of me, so when pushing up i'd still be behind a bunch of them. If i push hard I can usually get past a lot of them, and my handles are ok for dribbling past most smaller guys who gamble for the steal, especially when they think i'm going to be uncordinated for my size. But i realise now that I take the foot of the pedal just past 1/2 court and allow the chance someone will steal it from behind. The reason why I do that is I don't want to be greedy, and I want to let some of my team mates catch up, and hopefully i can get an assist. But if I made up my mind to go all the way, I think I would score more often than not. Especially considering if we let them setup their usual zone defense before we attack, we're never going to get past the top 3 defenders. We don't have the perimeter shooting and our guards can't get the ball past them. But I get what you mean. I should just push it hard all the way to the rim if i've pulled down a board, that's not selfish. I'd definitely try that next game, and in the meantime i'll work on my handles with the video. Thank you for showing me a different way of looking at things, appreciate it.

I know you're easing back into things after an injury but I'd still focus on picking up the speed of your runs as opposed to worrying about distance.  7km/hr is very slow especially for someone who prefers an uptempo game.  To give an idea of what that would require, the really fit guys on my team who can run up and down the court all day train intervals in the 13k-20k/hr range for 20-30min. 

Healing my ankle is kind of my priority right now. I know when I do sprints, it puts a lot of stress on my ankle and I think it sets back healing. I'd love to be sprinting regularly. Once i'm healthy i will change priority to sprinting. I've never sprinted until this year and it's terribly exciting for me each time I set a new PR - but i have to be patient and not push too hard right now. The same goes for jumping. Plyometric stuff is very hard on the ankle and i feel it afterwards. In the meantime i'm happy with gently pushing my squat up and spending some time building up aerobic endurance. I have never done running before so i've probably missed out on the benefits of aerobic work (health benefits like low resting heart rate etc). I also find that running on the treadmill for distance/time is fairly gentle on my ankle compared to sprinting.

I also realise my times are quite slow for now, but it's early days, considering today was just the 3rd time running kms. Maybe it wont help me at all and i'm just wasting time, but i'm happy to experiment. If after a few weeks I realise it's not doing anything for my athletisicm then i'll back off the longer runs. You are right that 7km/hr is slow but it's kind of the aerobic sweet spot for me atm, it's the pace where I can run but not go anerobic and get lactic acid buildup. It's not supposed to mimic game conditions like your team mates who can do  impressive 13-20km/hr intervals (sounds like a good goal for me to work up to though) . i'm using the guidelines from the HIIT myth ebook (link below) which try to keep the heart rate down so you're in teh aerobic zone. I don't have a heart rate monitor but i'm going by feel for now. Probably shouldn't even be as high as 7km/hr to be honest. I tried 8km/hr today and after 5 minutes I knew there was no way i was gonna run 25minutes at that pace.

Anyway, good luck w/the team and keep up the hard work.

Thank you and I appreciate you stopping by!


http://anthonymychal.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/TheMythofHIIT.pdf